Politics, Economics, Culture, and Theology with a Biblical Viewpoint

Archive for the category “Neo-Cons”

I’ve heard Mormons believe that God directly inspired the Constitution. As a Christian, I know there was only one nation that had a directly inspired “Constitution.” Knowing that one’s country is founded by God should have given Israel a great deal of confidence among the nations. Sometimes it did so. Other times, due to unbelief, it did not.

But there was another way unbelief could trap Israelites. They could allow God’s gifts to Israel to give them confidence even when they were in sin and should have been humbling themselves both in the sight of God and the nations. Paul wrote to them about this:

But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” (Romans 2:17-24, ESV)

As I write my posts on how to understand Romans, I’ve been thinking a great deal about this passage. In light of recent news about Edward Snowden, with headlines like, “US Seemingly Unaware of Irony in Accusing Snowden of Spying,” there seem to be similarities. Israel was both publicly immoral and publicly moralistic, at the same time, without any insincerity. If that seems impossible, look at the news about how America’s ruling class is posturing. Read more…

Russia has added a new unit to its military: a parachuting, mobile church – complete with priest, deacon, and an iconostasis. The purpose of this flying cathedral is to satisfy the “spiritual demands of military personnel and to improve morale and discipline in military units.” The inflatable-tent-turned-cathedral can be dropped where needed to provide worship, prayer, and sacraments to soldiers engaged in war or those stationed away from an accessible parish. The following demonstration video is a must-see:

an·ar·chy (nr-k): Rules without rulers; the doctrine of abolishing all compulsory, tax-funded government. Crime would be dealt with through the free market as private agencies offer judicial services based on consumer preferences.

min·ar·chy (mnr-k): Minimal rule; the belief that civil government rightfully exists to protect individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud. Law enforcement, courts and military are valid government services.

stat·ism (sttzm): The practice or doctrine of giving a centralized government control over economic planning and policy, usually including the acceptance of welfarism and militarism.

If you adhere to a minarchist view of civil government, a statist has probably accused you of being an anarchist at least once in your life. Read more…

Today, I was reading a story about some Iranians who are in trouble and could even be executed in Iran because they converted to Christianity. I’m sure this threat is real and pray they will be delivered.

But I had to wonder. The story was laced with the typical anti-Iranian rhetoric of US condemnation. I started trying to remember when was the last time I had heard of people about to be executed in Saudi Arabia or any other US ally. Read more…

Once upon a time, all the eagles had forgotten they were eagles. They used to live in high mountain eyries, but someone had convinced them they ought to be living on a farm. They still called themselves eagles, but they had little memory of what their make up was capable of; they had little imagination that their very constitution would allow them to fly. Instead they hunted and pecked. They were sometimes called back to books about the old mountain life, books written by their founding feathers, but mostly the eagles mentioned these ideas in passing, and with little reference to the actual books.

The eagles would get together to vote on important matters. When they would get together, they were often led by a couple of strange birds named Main and Grand. They were odd eagles. They didn’t look like eagles, but they did a really good job of doing what they said was a really good job. They were experts at hunting and pecking for corn.

One of the eagles was not like the others. He was not content to walk slowly around the farm, and to scratch at the dirt. He was alway suggesting they should try to move faster. We should run – he would say, looking to the skies. Read more…

Paul Leaves the Floor, Refuses to Yield Values

As the thirteen-hour filibuster ended, Rand Paul left the floor to a roar of applause. He took the floor alone, but now the entire twittersphere and even the Republican leadership joined his crusade against the Obama administration’s drone policy. In one day’s time he has reached the name recognition of his father for standing for the same sort of issues. Again, like his father, he has forced the Republican establishment to join him as cobelligerants for the cause of liberty.

The past three decades of American politics have been blessed with two generations of men who are unafraid to be political game-changers. Ron and Rand are Leaders seemingly incapable of “relinquishing” their values. Rand’s thirteen-hour filibuster is a good tribute to his father’s legacy of refusing to “yield” to politics as usual.

“How to revive the flagging fortunes of the Republican Party might matter to some people, but it’s not a question that should concern principled conservatives. Crypto-conservatives aplenty stand ready to shoulder that demeaning task.”

Several weeks ago a piece appeared over at The American Conservative touting itself as a manifesto-of-sorts for a re-envisioned and reinvigorated conservatism: “Counterculture Conservatism: the right needs less Ayn Rand, more Flannery O’Connor.” Before the literary among you get excited, I should warn you that author Andrew J. Bacevich interacts with O’Connor nowhere in the article; in fact, by the end, I felt a little like Inigo Montoya (“you keep using that name; I do not think it means who you think it means”). Anyway, Bacevich’s opening lines (quoted above) are one measure consolation, one measure exhortation, and just a splash of knowing self-congratulation

True enough, a lot of people predicted that if and when Republicans lost the 2012 election, the party would attempt to reinvent itself, distancing itself from “loser issues” like the sanctity of biblical marriage, or the fight against abortion (of course, the party had already begun to do this when they put Mitt Romney in the race, but what’s a few months one way or the other to the long memory of history?). ‘Republican’ and ‘Conservative’ might be related terms, but fortunately they are not perfect synonyms, and many of the latter woke up and found themselves too “principled” to remain attached to the former. I followed the author this far because, truthfully, I was in that number and could say, without irony, “thank God for conservatism,” but he (in this case, the article’s author) wasn’t finished yet.

What, then, is Bacevich’s vision of conservatism in the coming epoch?

“The conservative tradition I have in mind may not satisfy purists. It doesn’t rise to the level of qualifying as anything so grandiose as a coherent philosophy. It’s more of a stew produced by combining sundry ingredients. The result, to use a word that ought warm the cockles of any conservative’s heart, is a sort of an intellectual slumgullion.”

His recipe for this mess of pottage includes, among other thinkers, heavy doses of Flannery O’Connor (he drops her name a second time, but by now I’m even more skeptical that he could explain satisfactorily why she belongs in the discussion) and Wendell Berry (who recently came out in support of gay marriage, which will seem more relevant in a minute)—“don’t skimp” he writes.

Next, there are the sweeping, inspirational value statements about the human responsibility of stewardship—“preserving our common inheritance and protecting that which possesses lasting value”—the importance of community—“ Conservatives understand that the most basic community, the little platoon of family, is under unrelenting assault”—awareness of pain and suffering—“conservatives also believe in Original Sin, by whatever name”—and patriotism—“America is amber waves of grain, not SEAL Team Six.”

Bacevich finally descends to the level of clear details in outlining the task that is before the next generation conservative.

“The key to success will be to pick the right fights against the right enemies, while forging smart tactical alliances. (By tactical, I do not mean cynical.) Conservatives need to discriminate between the issues that matter and those that don’t, the contests that can be won and those that can’t….So forget about dismantling the welfare state. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and, yes, Obamacare are here to stay. Forget about outlawing abortion or prohibiting gay marriage. Conservatives may judge the fruits produced by the sexual revolution poisonous, but the revolution itself is irreversible.”

He warns against a Quixotic tilting at windmills, while adopting for himself the conciliatory tone of the Don on his deathbed, claiming that there are no birds in last year’s nests. I mention Don Quixote, but the reader may also be reminded of the first-century Sadducees with their “smart tactical alliances.” This conservatism begins to sound less countercultural and more concultural or syncultural. One could hope that the author simply intends the Church to play a larger role than the State in transforming culture, but churches are mentioned as a kind of afterthought in the close of his manifesto and largely as a sheepish concession that they all “may be flawed.” The piece reads instead, as if conservatives simply have bigger (largely financial) fish to fry.

“There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship [a happy marriage] with the person they love.”

But his essay’s final remarks strike a now familiar chord that complicates the simplicity of that emotional appeal:

“We are at a crossroads. I believe the American people will vote for free markets under equal rules of the game—because there is no opportunity or job growth any other way. But the American people will not hear us out if we stand against their friends, family, and individual liberty.”

Neither Bacevich nor Huntsman is the force behind this shift, but they are both good indications of where the winds are blowing. Both outline a strategy that feigns compassion (or possibly misunderstands real compassion as a secondary end) in order to gain influence, especially in financial/economic arenas. These Conservatives are simply maneuvering to become the new Republicans and making moderate the new conservative.

Fortunately, the Christian remains more conservative than the Conservative. Kuyper would remind us that the state is meant to restrain sin out of love for the nation and concern for its culture; love and concern based in and upon the truly charitable, Gospel-oriented mission of the Church, where liberty and equality truly abide.

So, how to revive the flagging fortunes of the conservative movement might matter to some people, but it’s not a question that should concern principled Christians. Crypto-conservatives aplenty stand ready to shoulder that demeaning task.

Sean Johnson is a graduate student of Literature at the University of Dallas (TX) and husband to a beautiful pregnant woman.

One of the perplexing dilemmas we face as those who oppose the over-reach of the Federal Government is the inconsistency we see in such movements. While on the one hand, we opine viciously in opposition to all forms of welfarism, on the other hand, we support and encourage our military efforts ( a form of international welfarism).
In his essay for The American Conservative, Ivan Eland discusses this inconsistency and warns conservatives that they can’t have it both ways:

“Conservatives should be leery of jumping into wars not only because American powers may become overextended—especially in a time of fiscal crisis—but because war makes government expand rapidly at home, even in areas of national security.”[1]

It is also fair to say that the Conservative mood has changed drastically in these last few years. Just as Democrats are quick to oppose a policy under a Republican governance, so too are they quick to support that same policy under a Democratic presidency.[2] I would like to think Republicans have learned their lessons, but they are just as prone to falling into the cycle of political hypocrisy. On a positive note, I have heard growing opposition to Obama’s Drone Strikes’ Policy from Republicans. Much of this opposition stems from the non-hawkish Senator, Rand Paul.

In his 2007 book, A Tragic Legacy, Glenn Greenwald details many of the former Bush supporters who have now come to see the light on America’s endless wars. Among them is Rod Dreher, a former contributor to National Review. In 2001, Dreher declared, “Thank God we have a Republican in the White House.”[3] Dreher later describes his regret for supporting Bush’s policies:

I see that I was the fool…the consequences of his (Bush’s) failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did.

These political transformations are the results of a long line of unintended consequences, or what Chalmers Johnson referred to as Blowback.

I am convinced that serious minded Republicans are willing to count the cost, and the cost has been high. The U.S accounts for more than 50% of the world’s military spending[4] and with all that might it has left the Middle East desolate and unstable. The eloquent “No Nation-Building ” answer given by then candidate George Bush should be our policy. It is costing us too much. And as Eland observes, once warfare starts, taxes and spending continue:

Conservatives should not fail to recognize that war is the most prominent cause of the massive welfare state that has been erected in the United State.

Hopefully, consistency will return to small-government conservatives. We cannot continue to stay on budget at home, while distributing our credit cards abroad.

Christopher Dorner, a government-trained killer who went AWOL, has been in the news quite a bit the last few days. The manhunt for the former police officer ended on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 when the cabin he was hiding in was mistakenly caught fire by San Bernardino County Sheriff Deputies. The fire led to the death of the 33-year old man who was accused of murdering four people, including a police officer.

Dorner theMinority

Dorner grew up in Southern California and attended a Christian School, his childhood spent in well-to-do white communities. Dorner later wrote a manifesto in which he said that he felt as though he was the only African-American in his Christian school, and that he was often in trouble for fighting over the racial tension that existed between him and the other students. He graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in La Palma, California, a city with census data suggesting that less than three percent of the region’s population is African-American. He went on to study at the not-so-diverse Southern Utah University.

Dorner the Soldier

Chris Dorner went on to serve for over ten years in the Naval Reserve. He was first commissioned domestically and then spent several years in the Middle East. He worked his way up to the rank of Lieutenant and left the Navy Reserve decorated and with an honorable discharge.

Dorner the Cop

Dorner worked for the Los Angeles Police Department from 2005 to 2008, until he was fired for allegedly falsifying a report that claimed that another officer had used excessive violence. The case became the focus of Dorner’s “manifesto,” in which he catalogued and documented alleged uses of excessive force by the police.

What Chris Dorner Represents

Dorner represents much of what is wrong with our American culture and its constant state of schizophrenia. Men (and soon, women) in our nation’s military are trained to believe they are fighting for freedom and equality, while those in military service often come to see that they grew up in a country where freedom and equality are not realities for so many. Policemen and women are trained to protect and serve the cause of justice, yet when they “hit the beat” they may find that justice is meted out at the whim of those who hold power and is not based on the rule of law. Men risk their lives and livelihoods for what they believe to be noble causes only to find that their efforts have been used to further the ends of the malicious programs of an increasingly totalitarian state.

Dorner is significant because his life resembles the journey of a character from The Matrix: the more he wakes up to his own reality, the more unbearable it becomes. Dorner was trained to serve his country, yet he was sent on an imperialistic errand to Bahrain. He joined the Los Angeles Police Department to protect against the sort of injustices that he believed he had experienced, only to become disillusioned by what he perceived as excessive violence and corruption.

This is not to excuse Chris Dorner from whatever crimes he had committed, but rather to note that as long as America progresses deeper toward an Orwellian state, we should expect more confused Dorners who react in violent ways to the instability of their world. It should be understood that the welfare state, the warfare state, and the police state all operate in tandem. Murray Rothbard recognized that these were the wedges that tyrannical governments use to pit segments of the population against one another. He said,

The liberals, in short, push the “welfare” part of our omnipresent welfare-warfare state, while the conservatives stress the warfare side of the pie.

LBJ’s Great Society and Black Culture

We live in a country that believes that racism ended with a war and government intervention, yet year after year new events prove that racism is still very much alive. Growing up the son of a bi-racial couple, I have experienced the glare of those who look down upon white women who have Mexican husbands. Despite Hollywood’s attempt to teach us that we live in a color-blind culture, racism still exists. And this racism is perpetuated by a government thirst for power that feeds off class warfare. President Lyndon B. Johnson helped to foster prolonged class warfare with his “Great Society” programs which made dependents of many minorities. Ann Coulter explains,

Everyone knew – even FDR’s secretary of labor, Frances Perkins, knew – that granting widows’ benefits to unmarried women with illegitimate children would have disastrous consequences…

But under LBJ, that’s exactly the system liberals implemented. The “suitable home” requirements—such as having a husband–were jettisoned as irrational and racist by liberal know-it-alls in the Federal Bureau of Public Assistance. By 1960, only 8 percent of welfare benefits intended for widows or wives with disabled husbands were being collected by such. More than 60 percent of Aid to Families with Dependent Children payments went to “absent father” homes. As a result, illegitimacy, particularly among blacks, went through the roof. That was the year the black marriage rate began its precipitous decline, gradually at first, with the marriage rate for black women falling below 70 percent for the first time only in 1970…By 2010, only 30.1 percent of blacks above the age of 15 were married, compared to 52.7 percent of whites…To hide their own role in the suppression of a black middle class, liberals promoted the myth that slavery alone had produced dystopian black lives, This is the quasi-theological underpinning of the modern welfare state. [1]

Erol Ricketts, a demographer and sociologist with the Rockefeller Foundation, found that between 1890 and 1950, blacks had higher marriage rates than whites, according to the U.S. Census. [2]

The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery could not have done, the harshest Jim Crow laws and racism could not have done, namely break up the black family

It is no coincidence that the protest against these sort of minority-oppressing policies was led by civil rights movement, in which pastors and black leaders fought for the preservation of the nuclear family. The government elites understood that destroying the Christian family was the key to crippling the will of a Christian people. Without strong men to lead families, the government could step in and take the place of father and provider. Prominent civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. also opposed the war in Vietnam, appropriately recognizing that war and oppression are antithetical to liberty. King famously said,

For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

“O, yes, I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath –

America will be!”

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. [3]

Dorner belongs to a generation that was taught that MLK’s dream became a reality, a generation of young people who trusted their government to do the right thing. So many hoped and believed that America had become a place of liberty for all. I wonder if Chris Dorner is just one of many who have become disillusioned and confused by the mixed messages they get from every side.

Black Culture and Rap Music: A Response to Government Oppression

Disclaimer: The songs being discussed here contain foul language, adult themes, and offensive content. I strongly discourage our readers from listening to them. The point of this piece is to merely interact with work that is already a part of popular culture.

Yeah, I’m a gangsta, but still I got flavor
Without a gun and a badge, what do ya got?
A sucker in a uniform waitin’ to get shot
by me, or another nigga [4]

These are a few lines from the famous protest song, “F*** Tha Police,” from the Los Angeles-based group N.W.A., who expressed many of the same concerns about the Los Angeles Police Department that Dorner noted in his manifesto, only twenty years earlier. The lyrics are shocking, not just because of their reckless vulgarity, but because their near prophetic nature in relation to Dorner’s actions. Some would argue that this sort of rap music encourages men like Dorner to lose respect for authorities, that this kind of music encouraged his violent behavior. But we are discussing a man who was a decorated officer in our Armed Forces and who trained with the LAPD. He claimed to be concerned about the corruption of an organization to which he had submitted for many years.

Boyz In The Hood

In the early 1990s John Singleton attempted to address the social unrest that existed in the Los Angeles area in his movie Boyz ‘N The Hood,in which he included an interaction with a black Los Angeles Police Officer.

The scene is truly penetrating as the wholesome Tre Styles is pulled over by an overeager black police officer, who immediately places his large handgun at the black teenager’s neck. The cop is portrayed to be self-hating of his own black culture and claims that he took this job because he hated “little n*****s.” We see the kid trembling and a tear runs down his face as the officer says, “I could blow your head off with this Smith & Wesson and you couldn’t do s**t!” Finally, the officer receives another call on his radio and allows the boy to leave.

Two decades later this is the same sort of violence that arises once again in Dorner’s beat, urging him to file a report. But much like the LAPD of the Boyz in the Hood, nothing is done to rectify the situation.

Modern Rap and Anti-Police, Anti-State Sentiments

Movies and music are a way cultures express values and concerns. The anti-war movement was expressed by the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” and in the same way, black culture expresses its opposition to police brutality, to institutionalized racism, and to government oppression in the N.W.A and the Boyz in the Hood.

Opposition to government police officers is still a theme found in today’s modern rap music. Tauheed Epps, also know as 2 Chainz, is a Grammy-nominated rapper whose music has penetrated the hip hop scene. I’ve encountered his song several times while tuning through the radio here in Sacramento. Last month, there was an article on Huffington Post that showed a clip from the song’s music video that included what was implied to be an anti-police scene. This piqued my interest and I took a look at the song’s actual lyrics.

The lyrics for the track I’m Different aren’t really all that different, as they contain the same general themes we seen in today’s rap music: fame, sex, money. Looking for the cop scene, I watched the video that Huffington Post had put up. This Christian quickly recognized some incongruities in the video.

A Commercial Paradox

It is appropriate for us to be critical of this song; as it is presented it has little value to contribute, even as mindless entertainment. One could quickly, and rightly so, identify the commercial aspects of this song and how it so heavily relies on expressions of wealth in expensive cars and material abundance. Listening to rap music, I’ve often identified this as a strange paradox. Some rap music points to deeper cultural issues of inequality and poverty, yet a large portion simply portrays commercialized nonsense.

Too often the rapper expresses his values by borrowing the worth of an object that others wish they also had. In many ways, this reduces much of this genre down to urban jingles for commercial products. The song then becomes a commercial in itself, one that people are willing to pay to listen to. This becomes even more perplexing when we consider that radio stations then use these rap music commercials to get listeners to hear more traditional commercials.

The visuals for I’m Different are compelling, if you’re into watching Ferrari drivers arrest cops and a very tall rapper with long hair strutting around in an all-leopard ensemble. I’m Different is a single from B.O.A.T.S., which stands for “Based on a Tru Story” (Chainz doesn’t like the letter “e”) and might explain why Deuce is riding around in a boat for much of the video.

There is this unfortunate scene, which seems gratuitous (though the gun-toting folks did find cocaine on the offending officer.)

Tables Turned

The music video represents a movement away from portraying the black youth as the victim. Now the young men pull over the police officer, point their gun at him, and arrest him as he kneels in front of them. The tables turn as the young men show the officer that they are no longer going to be abused. As the Huffington Post article mentioned, the young men find drugs on the officer pointing back to their view that the police are corrupt and hypocritical in their application of the law. As the most recent anti-police commentary, this is the culture of men like Chris Dorner: a culture of black men positively asserting that they will no longer be victims of the police state. In this sense, 2 Chainz is truly different, he represents a group of men who will not be complicit depending on the government to fix the problems that they understand the government to have created.

Just because you can watch half-nude women on afternoon television or gay men kissing on the streets of nearly any major city does not mean America is free, as complacent liberals might think, much less too free, as conservatives often suggest. Just because most dissidents are left alone doesn’t mean there is no police state, for that would be convenient indeed for the police statists: the idea that people ought not complain so long as they have the right to do so. [5]

Some may object to these anti-police views of modern rap music and complain of the need for law and order. R.J. Rushdoony has explained that the police force is to be a citizen force. “[T]he police power is the citizen’s right of self-defense…” Yet we can quickly identify dozens of modern police functions that are state functions of control and theft, not in any way respecting the intent of police as a delegated form of self-defense. Rushdoony continues,”Present-day trends towards a national police force are thus aimed at disarming and capturing the citizenry for totalitarian purposes.” [6]

What we see in black culture is the expression, warranted or not, that their local police have gone beyond the role of self-defense to the point of violence and subjugation. The violent responses of some, like Chris Dorner, are not to be condoned, but in order to prevent further violence, the reasons behind such behavior need to be explored. Those who are supposed to serve and protect must also be restrained from violence by the rule of law and limited to their proper function and jurisdiction.

What we see in Dorner’s story is the real unintended adverse results of a politicized police. Our policies abroad and domestically have real consequences for our culture and for our future.

The Kuyperian Commentary. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a link is given.

I confess: I supported Congressman Ron Paul during the presidential primaries. I thought he was the only candidate anywhere near to a biblical view of government on the major issues. What are the major issues, you ask? Well, there’s that annoying idea about actually obeying your oath to follow the Constitution; economic and monetary policy; war and foreign policy; and civil liberties. These are broad categories that include numerous issues. Overlapping each of them is the issue of abortion. I highly respected Paul for his firm stance against abortion. He seemed to truly care about the unborn in a way other pro-life candidates didn’t. Not only did he spend a career delivering babies, he published two full books against abortion and introduced legislation each session of Congress that would have outlawed abortion nationwide. There is no politician in recent history that can match Paul’s zeal when it comes to protecting the unborn.

All pro-life candidates say they want to appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade. They say they are for a constitutional amendment defining the unborn as persons under the law. These two positions alone will give any candidate an automatic stamp of approval from pro-lifers, even if all evidence points to the candidate being insincere. I think it’s time to raise our standards.

Paul certainly wants Roe v. Wade overturned and the unborn defined as legal persons, but both methods mentioned above are unrealistic. The majority of Supreme Court justices in the last forty years have been Republican-appointed. Five of the seven justices who passed Roe v. Wade were Republican-appointed. Have we seen any attempts to overturn Roe since then? Of course not. And don’t forget, a Republican-appointed justice was the deciding factor in passing Obamacare. Gambling the lives of innocent children to the Supreme Court has been a losing game from the start. Only delusional gamblers keep playing.

Likewise, a constitutional amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the states before it becomes law. Do we really think there are thirty-eight states willing to do so? Declaring the personhood of the unborn would take years to pass (if ever) with millions of abortions continuing in the meantime. This strategy is simply a distraction from the true solution.

Paul’s Sanctity of Life Act would have removed jurisdiction from the Supreme Court and defined the unborn as persons with full protection under the law. You don’t need new justices or amendments – the Constitution gives Congress the power to remove jurisdiction from the Supreme Court. Republicans could have passed this bill when they controlled all three branches of government under George W. Bush. Did they? Nope. Paul never received more than five cosponsors, but that didn’t stop him from introducing his bill every congressional session. In his current and final year in Congress, Paul’s bill has zero cosponsors.

Unfortunately, conservative evangelicals were largely critical of Paul during his political career. He was mistaken by many as “not pro-life enough” all because he didn’t use the typical rhetoric. In reality, Paul was perhaps the most pro-life congressman of this generation. The pro-life movement will not see many victories until we reassess our strategies and start following Paul’s example. May his efforts not be in vain; and may the Lord Jesus Christ raise up leaders who will carry on his legacy.